2011-2012
In the winter of 2010/2011, I did a lot of daily dog walking in an area that I hadn’t often gone to before. The area I know as Thornly consists of grazed fields, scrub, copses, and the fallow land of the outlying grounds of Dykebar Hospital.
Roughly speaking, the area is enclosed along one side by housing and along the next by the range of hospital buildings. The other two edges are defined by the Grahamston and Caplethill Roads. On the other side of Caplethill Road, fields rise to form the apron of the Brownside Braes.
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Thornly is popular with dog walkers and yet I often see roe deer. I wondered how the deer managed to live there despite the constant passage of people and dogs. It occurred to me that the scrub-covered folds and creases formed by the cuttings and embankments of two disused railway lines might be part of the answer.
There are two regular wildlife occurrences to be found in the dark winter days; coming across roe deer in the half-light, and the clamorous twilight gathering of many hundreds of jackdaws to roost in a small wood.
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2012-2013
In the previous winter (2011-2012) I had been exploring landscape features, and some of the events – both regular and the exceptional, which occurred in Thornly. By the time summer came around, I began to take more interest in the shaded pockets where cuts had been made through hillocks or embankments to let the railway lines, roads and farm tracks cross over each other. The stone abutments of the bridged crossings tightly enclosed these spaces.
I began by putting out a second array of solargraph cameras, this time positioning them to try and capture the ‘cut off’ nature of these spaces; instead of recording the daylong arcs of sun, I would record the absence of sun where it was obscured by the abutment walls.
Two of the abutment spaces are almost domestic in scale. My plan was to add something domestic into one of these rather private spaces which had been created somewhat unexpectedly, by a large engineering project. All the work would be done when the winter sun restricts both the hours, and the amount of light available.
thornly : metal bridge abutment : beetroot ink